ME. COKE OF HOLKHAM 83 



Hall to gather the wisdom of his namesake at Holkham. 

 At the sheep-shearings were collected practical and theo- 

 retical agriculturists, farmers of different districts, breeders 

 of every stock. The Duke of Bedford, Lord Egremont, 

 and other landlords established similar meetings in dif- 

 ferent parts of the country. 



National necessities demanded the extinction of the 

 open-field farmer, and the enclosure and reclamation of 

 wastes and commons. The same causes during this period 

 brought the same fate upon the small freeholders or yeo- 

 men. More substantial than the open-field farmer or the 

 cottager, they maintained their struggle for existence with 

 more tenacity. The evidence of the Agricultural Com- 

 mission of 1833 proves that they still existed in almost 

 every county. But their numbers were already dimi- 

 nished. The social advantages of landownership combined 

 with high profits to give land a fancy value. In Cheshire, 

 during the French war, agricultural land fetched as much 

 as forty years' purchase. Yeomen consulted their pecu- 

 niary advantage by selling their estates ; capitalists gra- 

 tified both their tastes and their speculative instincts 

 by buying land. It was manifestly the interest of small 

 freeholders to sell their properties, the size of which pre- 

 vented their taking full advantage of the price of corn, 

 and to employ their capital in farming hired land. Those 

 who remained on their own estates were for the most part 

 ruined. War prices and the corn laws made farming a 

 gambling speculation ; the wheat area alternately con- 

 tracted and expanded ; violent fluctuations in the value of 

 farm produce upset all calculations. Many yeomen mort- 

 gaged their estates to make extravagant provision for 

 their children, to buy more land, to enclose and im- 

 prove their properties, or to erect better farm buildings. 



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